This relates generally to wireless communications, and, more particularly, to ways in which to create wireless local area networks.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has promulgated wireless local area network standards that govern the protocols with which computers discover and associate with access points. These protocols are sometimes referred to as the IEEE 802.11 protocols or WiFi® protocols.
To simplify functions such as peer-to-peer connections and make other refinements to wireless local area networking procedures, there is an interest in developing other wireless networking protocols. For example, the WiFi Alliance® has supported a protocol called WiFi Direct.
The WiFi Direct protocol supports peer-to-peer connections, but specifies that devices that wish to be discoverable and that are not already participating in a group must spend a certain amount of time on a fixed listen channel (channel 1, 6, or 11) to respond to probe requests. As a result, a device with a single radio that wishes to be discoverable while simultaneously participating in an infrastructure network must split time between the channel on which the infrastructure network is operating and its listen channel. This channel hopping requirement reduces the amount of time a device is discoverable by peers, reduces throughput, and has the potential to increase power consumption.
It would be desirable to be able to avoid the penalties associated with this type of channel hopping while maintaining wireless local area network discoverability.